Notwithstanding this, I was determined to investigate the matter accurately, and I thought that I could not do so in any better way than by making borings. I accordingly began cautiously to dig at the extreme ends of the Greek Ilium; but these borings down to the native rock brought to light only walls of houses, and fragments of pottery belonging to the Greek period,—not a trace of the remains of the preceding occupants. In making these borings, therefore, I gradually came nearer to the fancied Pergamus, but without any better success; till at last as many as seven shafts, which I dug at the very foot of the hill down to the rock, produced only Greek masonry and fragments of Greek pottery. I now therefore assert most positively that Troy was limited to the small surface of this hill; that its area is accurately marked by its great surrounding wall, laid open by me in many places; that the city had no Acropolis, and that the Pergamus is a pure invention of Homer; and further that the area of Troy in post-Trojan times down to the Greek settlement was only increased so far as the hill was enlarged by the débris that was thrown down, but that the Ilium of the Greek colony had a much larger extent at the time of its foundation.[38]
Though, however, we find on the one hand that we have been deceived in regard to the size of Troy, yet on the other we must feel great satisfaction in the certainty, now at length ascertained, that Troy really existed, that the greater portion of this Troy has been brought to light by me, and that the Iliad—although on an exaggerated scale—sings of this city and of the fact of its tragic end. Homer, however, is no historian, but an epic poet, and hence we must excuse his exaggerations.
As Homer is so well informed about the topography and the climatic conditions of the Troad, there can surely be no doubt that he had himself visited Troy. But, as he was there long after its destruction, and its site had moreover been buried deep in the débris of the ruined town, and had for centuries been built over by a new town, Homer could neither have seen the Great Tower of Ilium nor the Scæan Gate, nor the great enclosing Wall, nor the palace of Priam; for, as every visitor to the Troad may convince himself by my excavations, the ruins and red ashes of Troy alone—forming a layer of from five to ten feet thick—covered all these remains of immortal fame; and this accumulation of débris must have been much more considerable at the time of Homer’s visit. Homer made no excavations so as to bring those remains to light, but he knew of them from tradition; for the tragic fate of Troy had for centuries been in the mouths of all minstrels, and the interest attached to it was so great that, as my excavations have proved, tradition itself gave the exact truth in many details. Such, for instance, is the memory of the Scæan Gate in the Great Tower of Ilium, and the constant use of the name Scæan Gate in the plural, because it had to be described as double,[39] and in fact it has been proved to be a double gate. According to the lines in the Iliad (XX. 307, 308), it now seems to me extremely probable that, at the time of Homer’s visit, the King of Troy declared that his race was descended in a direct line from Æneas.[40]
Now as Homer never saw Ilium’s Great Tower, nor the Scæan Gate, and could not imagine that these buildings lay buried deep beneath his feet, and as he probably imagined Troy to have been very large—according to the then existing poetical legends—and perhaps wished to describe it as still larger, we cannot be surprised that he makes Hector descend from the palace in the Pergamus and hurry through the town in order to arrive at the Scæan Gate; whereas that gate and Ilium’s Great Tower, in which it stands, are in reality directly in front of the royal house. That this house is really the king’s palace seems evident from its size, from the thickness of its stone walls, in contrast to those of the other houses of the town, which are built almost exclusively of unburnt bricks, and from its imposing situation upon an artificial hill directly in front of or beside the Scæan Gate, the Great Tower, and the great surrounding Wall. This is confirmed by the many splendid objects found in its ruins, especially the enormous royally ornamented vase with the picture of the owl-headed goddess Athena, the tutelary divinity of Ilium (see No. 219, p. 307); and lastly, above all other things, by the rich Treasure found close by it ([Plate II].). I cannot, of course, prove that the name of this king, the owner of this treasure, was really PRIAM; but I give him this name because he is so called by Homer and in all the traditions. All that I can prove is, that the palace of the owner of this treasure, this last Trojan king, perished in the great catastrophe, which destroyed the Scæan Gate, the great surrounding Wall, and the Great Tower, and which desolated the whole city. I can prove, by the enormous quantities of red and yellow calcined Trojan ruins, from five to ten feet in height, which covered and enveloped these edifices, and by the many post-Trojan buildings, which were again erected upon these calcined heaps of ruins, that neither the palace of the owner of the Treasure, nor the Scæan Gate, nor the great surrounding Wall, nor Ilium’s Great Tower, were ever again brought to light. A city, whose king possessed such a treasure, was immensely wealthy, considering the circumstances of those times; and because Troy was rich, it was powerful, had many subjects, and obtained auxiliaries from all quarters.
Troy had therefore no separate Acropolis; but as one was necessary for the great deeds of the Iliad, it was added by the poetical invention of Homer, and called by him Pergamus, a word of quite unknown derivation.
Last year I ascribed the building of the Great Tower of Ilium to the first occupants of the hill; but I have long since come to the firm conviction that it is the work of the second people, the Trojans, because it is upon the north side only, within the Trojan stratum of ruins, and from 16 to 19½ feet above the native soil, that it is made of actual masonry. I have, in my letters, repeatedly drawn attention to the fact, that the terra-cottas which I found upon the Tower can only be compared with those found at a depth of from 36 to 46 feet. This, however, applies only to the beauty of the clay and the elegance of the vessels, but in no way to their types, which, as the reader may convince himself from the illustrations to this work, are utterly different from the pottery of the first settlers.
